Sons & Daughters
by bj
Summary: If you love your father.


Disclaimer: 'The West Wing' and all related materials do not belong to me. Sorry to ruin your plans for financial freedom.   
Author's Note: The main thread of this story, not the flash-backy bits, takes place shortly after "War Crimes." No significant spoilers, though. The organisation Bartlet is addressing in the excerpts does exist (although I made up the address). This is the ACFC's website: http://www.acfc.org   
  
  
  
Sons & Daughters   
By BJ Garrett   
  
  
"There is a reason we call Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and the other signers of the Declaration ofIndependence the Founding Fathers. They created America and shaped its future. Our future, our children's future. The men who put their names to that admission of treason were the fathers of our culture, of our very identities, and of the identities of our sons and daughters."   
-From an address to the American Coalition for Fathers & Children by President Jed Bartlet, Washington, DC, March 23, 2001.   
  
  
"Dad!"   
  
The world hung on one word as he flew down the steps outside Bonney Day Academy. His father opened his arms and hugged him tightly, one hand on the top of his ruffled head, the other pressing into the warm knit of the boy's blue and red uniform sweater.   
  
"I missed you so much, Dad!" he exclaimed. "Was the plane ride fun?" At eight, he had never been on a plane.   
  
"I missed you too, buddy." No reply about the trip home. "You must've grown a foot since I've been gone, hey?"   
  
Sam giggled. He had grown an inch in the six months his father was overseas. "I made you a card in class, see?"   
  
A brightly coloured, sloppily folded rectangle waved above his head. Happy Fathers' Day, Dad!   
  
"That's great, Sam," his father said affectionately, taking his son's empty hand. "I'll look at it in the car. Your mom's waiting at home with chilli. Come on, buddy, let's go!"   
  
*   
  
He knew how the interview would end as soon as she jerked the door open. The chain pulled taut with a rattle. Her face did not register recognition.   
  
"Hello?" Her hazel eyes were warily curious.   
  
"Yes, hi, Ms. Hoynes," he said, "I'm Sam Seaborn? From the White House."   
  
Suddenly she was relieved, rolling her shoulders back with a deep sigh. Smiling a little, she put her hand through the gap. "Hi. I remember you, yes."   
  
They had only met three times, twice during the campaign and again at the Inaugural Ball. He shook her hand.   
  
"What can I do for you?" she asked, looking over her shoulder, as if she'd heard something.   
  
Instinct made him lean over and peer into the apartment behind her, trying to see what she was looking at. "Leo McGarry--you know...?"   
  
"Yes, I know him."   
  
"He asked me to meet with you. If you're not indisposed."   
  
"Um...not really."   
  
"It's about your father."   
  
She stared up at him with a blank expression, then nodded, closing the door.   
  
*   
  
An hour before graduation. His first scotch, multi-faceted in the crystal tumbler. He'd already put on his black gown, white-tasselled cap tucked under his arm. The study was full of male relatives and family friends, all holding glasses, the various shapes a code for their contents.   
  
"I'm very proud of you," his father said from behind him.   
  
He turned and smiled. "Thanks, Dad." He was proud of himself, and a little wary of what would happen tomorrow and the days after that, dominoes set to fall in a pattern.   
  
A slim cherry wood box with his initials embossed in gold on the top. The ubiquitous Seaborn pen set. It was a family tradition. There would be a car after Princeton, and either a generous monetary gift for medical school or an articling position in somebody's firm after law school.   
  
He wasn't sure whether he wanted the pen set or not. He wasn't sure where he wanted to start the clatter of the dominoes.   
  
*   
  
"Please, have a seat. Can I take your coat?" she asked, closing the door behind him, gesturing at the lacquered futon suite.   
  
"No, that's not necessary, this shouldn't take long," he replied, sitting on the edge of the chair. "I tried to call your office--"   
  
She lectured in 18th century American composition at Georgetown and played oboe in the orchestra.   
  
With a vague gesture, she shook her head. "I've taken a leave of absence for the rest of the term. My, um, my daughter's been ill. I'm sorry."   
  
That she would be sorry because her daughter was sick struck him as odd. "I don't normally do this sort of thing, but my colleague who does, well, he's busy with something else right now, and...."   
  
Something in her expression told him she understood that he didn't want to be here, and that he didn't enjoy doing what he had to do.   
  
He looked down at his hands on his knees, and said, "I'd feel a lot better if you sat down, Ms. Hoynes."   
  
"So this is about my dad?" she asked, crossing her arms as she sat on the sofa futon.   
  
"Yes."   
  
She released a sound like a laugh. "My dad's in Texas. On the President's order, I believe."   
  
Sam took a deep breath, refusing to look at the photographs on the mantle, refusing to think about Laurie's face when he asked for a name.   
  
"Yes." Get it over with and get out was Josh's advice. "Are you aware that your father knew about the President's condition before it became public knowledge?"   
  
She blinked. "Yes."   
  
"How did you find out?"   
  
"On Dateline, like everybody else," she replied after a pause.   
  
"Sorry?" He had slipped into examination mode. He had almost turned off his conflicting ethics. "I meant, how did you find out that the Vice President knew?"   
  
"He told me."   
  
"When?"   
  
"Labour Day weekend. There was a family barbecue at my brother's house in Sag Harbour. Last barbecue of the season."   
  
"My family barbecues until Thanksgiving."   
  
Startled, she stopped for a second. "Really?"   
  
"Yeah. They live in California."   
  
*   
  
It wasn't like everything was perfect, although everything was. It was like they were living a real-life version of some eighties comedy-drama. Fluffy hair and all.   
  
"Pass the white meat, please, son."   
  
The bottom of the dish burned his fingers as he passed it to his right.   
  
They had already asked how school was going, they had already commiserated on the absence of his assorted grandparents. There was nowhere for the conversation to go but the coordination of plates and bowls moving around the table.   
  
"Can I have the cranberry sauce, Mom? Please."   
  
Strangely, he was content. His sweater was warm and soft, his jeans were tight to the point of comfort rather than constriction, and his mom had lightened up enough to accept that the sun might never see the back of his neck again.   
  
*   
  
He tried again to get down to business. "How did he tell you?"   
  
"Well." She uncrossed her arms and rubbed her hands together. The small apartment was cold. Her chapped red knuckles stood out against the white of her thin fingers. "We went into the den. He made himself a club soda and said that he'd known the President had MS since the campaign."   
  
She stopped and raised her head, looking him in the eye. They waited, each expecting more from the other.   
  
"That's all?" he asked, disbelieving, somewhat relieved.   
  
"What more do you want?" she replied. "I don't remember exactly what he said, or what I said. It was a month and a half ago."   
  
*   
  
At some point during his final year at Duke, his parents separated for a month and a half. He hadn't known.   
  
He had been knee-deep in contract law and late-night debates on sexual politics while "Iolanthe" played in the background.   
  
*   
  
Gritting his teeth, Sam swallowed. It had to be done. "Yet you remember what he was drinking."   
  
She leaned back a little bit and her face seemed to ripple for a moment before she spoke. "He was drinking club soda, yes."   
  
"Did he imply that--" He broke off. The list of questions lined up in his mind. Just ask her and get out. This is as clean an operation as it gets.   
  
Did he imply that he had anything to do with the President continuing to conceal his illness? Did he imply that he had anything to do with the President deciding to discontinue concealing his illness?   
  
Did he want the President to run again? Was he angry that the President's running again?   
  
Would you be willing to testify to what you've told me before a Grand Jury convened by Special Prosecutor Clem Rollins? Would you be willing to testify in front of the House Oversight committee?   
  
A thin sound wavered down the hall behind her. She was out of the living room before he realised it was a child's cry.   
  
If you love your father, you'll say no.   
  
*   
  
"Your father...God, Sam, he's my best friend, but...."   
  
Dwight shook his head and slugged back the rest of his rye. Shivering, he placed his shot glass on the bar.   
  
"Twenty-eight years. I didn't want to tell you, but...."   
  
Staring into a mirror behind half-empty bottles, Sam nodded. That it was his father's business partner and oldest friend telling him did nothing to ease the ripe taste of infidelity in his mouth.   
  
"Thanks."   
  
He felt his lips move, felt his teeth fit back together after he spoke, but his voice was remote, as if it were his reflection speaking.   
  
The man in the mirror did not look half as dead as he felt.   
  
*   
  
A thin line of yellow light diagonally bisected the hallway, originating from the first doorway on his left. Two chubby ceramic bears held a wooden plaque painted with the name 'Adrienne.' The sign was malevolent and grey-scaled in the darkened hall.   
  
Hearing laboured, childish breathing and the soothing sounds of adult exhalation, he put a hand on the door and looked through the crack.   
  
She stood in the middle of the tiny bedroom. He could only see the left-hand side of her back and the top of a downy head resting on her shoulder. Her nose and forehead curved into the child's neck.   
  
*   
  
Green and grey jerseys flew by on the wide screen. He held the cold beer in his rigid right hand. The comfortable den of his parents' house was loud with football cheer, but he could only feel the tension of truth in his neck.   
  
To say nothing of the painful thrumming of his heart.   
  
"Half-time," his father announced jovially, clapping him on the shoulder. "You wanted to talk to me, buddy?"   
  
For some reason he couldn't respond, just stared impassively at the tv.   
  
"Sam?"   
  
*   
  
"It's all right, Adie. Shhh. Momma's here."   
  
At the sound of her voice, Sam snatched his hand away from the door as if it were burning and turned to go back to the living room.   
  
"Mr. Seaborn?"   
  
She pushed the door open with her foot in the crack and looked out at him. Her face was full of shock, anger, and curiosity.   
The baby in her arms was curled around her breast, head resting just beneath her chin. Tiny maroon sweatshirt and pants. Rainbow-coloured socks, the right one half-off. Long sooty eyelashes rested on fever-red cheeks, quivering as the little girl took another shuddering breath.   
  
His heart broke.   
  
*   
  
And fell all over his father's study.   
  
"How could you do this to us?" he asked raspily, finally. His throat was worn from shouting.   
  
His father was bent over his desk, head in his hands.   
  
Sam suddenly dreaded seeing his father's face again. He was horribly afraid that it would be streaked with tears. Or filled with the coldness he had always suspected lurked just beneath the exterior of manly affection.   
  
The middle-aged man at the desk whispered something.   
  
"What?" His own voice was barely audible.   
  
He moved closer, wanting contact. A hug or a fist in the gut. It didn't matter.   
  
"What, Dad?" he repeated, stronger.   
  
"Please, buddy...Sam. Please don't tell your mother."   
  
*   
  
"I'm sorry," he said quickly, looking away from the child, back down the hall.   
  
She ducked her head again, kissing the girl's cheek--it must sear her lips--then raised her eyes to his face.   
  
"What do you want from me?"   
  
The words were quiet, her voice husky, but they resonated with a depth of steel.   
  
"I'm sorry," he said again, desperate to get out of this. To escape his own duplicity and the betrayal he was offering her. "I'm not good at this. I'll get Josh to--"   
  
"No. What do you want from me?"   
  
*   
  
The study was quiet as he thought about it. It was filled with his father's desperation and his own as he thought about it.   
  
As he looked at the framed portraits on the dark-panelled wall. From his parents' wedding to his father's retirement party last spring.   
  
"It was all a lie, wasn't it?"   
  
"God, Sam, no...I love your mother. I love you. I just--this is such a mess."   
  
*   
  
He couldn't get out of this. Not with a sorry, not by shunting her onto Josh's schedule. This was his.   
  
Adrienne hiccupped.   
  
The tiny, vulnerable sound made him want to smile. It made him want to cry.   
  
He'd known how this would end.   
  
"I wanted nothing," he said gently, making it up. "Leo McGarry wanted you to tell me you would testify about your father to the Grand Jury."   
  
She leaned her cheek against Adrienne's head and looked at him sadly.   
  
*   
  
The strong, tanned hands dropped down hesitantly. He had not cried, but his lined face was full of despair. "Sam?"   
  
He wasn't sure what he could say. He didn't know.   
  
Those hands had lifted him up so he could touch the sky and rescue   
kites. That face was what his would be like in thirty years. This was his father, and he loved him, despite his broken heart.   
  
If you love your father, you'll say yes.   
  
*   
  
"I love my father," she said. The quiet of the apartment was not disturbed by her voice, only deepened. "And I love my mother, and my brother, and I really love my daughter. I don't know how you think you've got the moral authority to ask me to do that to him. You haven't got a clue what my family has been through. If you want him, you go to *him*. Do you understand?"   
  
She bit her bottom lip and he could see the practised tightness of her facial muscles, the smooth control built up over years of taming two slivers of wood, forcing them to conform to the notes on the pages, falling over the lines like dominoes.   
  
He couldn't think of anything to say.   
  
"Yeah."   
  
With a movement of her eyebrows, she propelled him back down the hall. He stood beside the front door as she pulled it open, leaning to balance her daughter's weight. Shuffling backwards out the door, he held his hand toward her. "Thank you for your time, Ms. Hoynes."   
  
Baffled and pained, she shook his hand. "You're welcome. I hope you got more out of it than I did."   
  
*   
  
"Dad? It's me."   
  
"Buddy. Sam. Hi."   
  
"You have to tell her."   
  
A long, contemplative silence, as if this was a possibility the older man had not considered.   
  
"Yeah, I guess so, hey? Now that the whole family knows."   
  
A short laugh was pushed out of him.   
  
"Yeah."   
  
"Thank you, son. You know...you know I'm proud of you, right?"   
  
It would have been so easy for his father to not care when he was a child, to brush him off until his days as an earner commenced. But he had not. He had been there. He had rushed from the airport, or his mistress's house, it didn't matter, to pick him up from school.   
  
If you love your father.   
  
"Dad."   
  
  
"Fathers represent loyalty, they embody strength and caring. They provide comfort without asking for anything in return but respect and love. So to whom do we turn for succor in our adulthood? We turn to our fathers. To whom do we look for guidance, for acceptance, for affirmation of fundamental personal values given to us in our childhood? We look to our fathers."   
-Dropped from the final draft of President Bartlet's address to the American Coalition for Fathers & Children, Washington, DC, March 23, 2001.   
  
End. 


End file.
